


At Home in the Black Cradle

by InsectKin



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: I can't believe I didn't even have to make my own tag for that!, Major Character Undeath, Past Sexual Assault, all warnings that apply to canon apply here, at least until the next book comes out, canon implied kujen was a sadist so I went with it, canon-compliant-ish, the torture isn't graphic but be forewarned, there are references to torture (kujen is in it so ...)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 08:57:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10738407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsectKin/pseuds/InsectKin
Summary: The beginning and end of Kujen and Jedao's time together in the Black Cradle and snippets of the centuries in between. Anchors may come and go, but the undead never change.





	At Home in the Black Cradle

**Author's Note:**

> Be sure you've read the tags, friend! I think this is more or less in line with canon but if any of the things mentioned in the tags bugged you there, be aware that they're part of this fic as well.

Within seconds of his sentence being handed down, General Shuos Jedao – now officially a heretic and arch traitor – felt the cold slap of a patch on the back of his neck. The shadows that crept into the edges of his vision gained speed at an alarming rate and he just managed to sit back down before he lost consciousness completely. He awoke standing in an unfamiliar hallway, swaying. His knees gave out and he collapsed onto the floor, sitting crosslegged with his head in his hands. 

His hands and legs were unshackled for the first time since he’d been captured after the Battle of Hellspin Fortress and he wondered briefly if he was dead. But he’d been sentenced to _un_ death, so he reasoned that this must be the Black Cradle instead. If that was the case, it meant he’d already been under for the entire trip, which was … a long time. He’d expected to be drugged on the way over but the neatness with which all that time had been lost was astounding. He had a second to marvel at the sorts of drugs the heptarchate had at its disposal before the weight of what he’d done hit him again, square in the chest, taking his breath away. He wondered if anyone was watching him, and if so if he could make enough of a fuss that they would put him back under again.

But he had murdered a million people to get here and now it was time to make those deaths matter. He would have to live with what he’d done – rather, he corrected himself, he’d have to undeath with it. He shook his head to clear it and twisted to look behind him. The moth that had presumably brought him was docked at the end of the hall, hatch locked and none of the crew in sight. Avoiding him might have been an order, but more likely they wouldn’t want to taint themselves anymore than they had to. He wondered if they knew that once they got home they’d all have their memories restored to fledge null, anyway. 

It was a shame, but he didn’t waste too much pity on them – unlike Jedao’s division they were still alive, and, unlike Jedao himself, the moth’s crew at least _would_ be going home.

He pushed himself up carefully, still woozy. He flexed his fingers, wiggled his toes, and started down the hallway, making an effort to be aware of every movement of his muscles in the few minutes he had left.

The first door was open and Jedao recognized Kujen’s latest form bending over a tray. Shuos training kicked in and Jedao hesitated on the threshold, contemplating all the ways he could assassinate Kujen right now. Or would have been able to, if Kujen could have been killed.

“You made it,” the Nirai observed, glancing up. 

“I assume you watched the proceedings,” Jedao replied. Kujen had been the one heptarch not at the military tribunal, sending a replacement Nirai in his stead as he often did. It was possible he hadn’t watched the vids of the trial, but he would have been the only person in the heptarchate who hadn’t.

“Of course. You were very convincing. You madman’ed your way into the Black Cradle brilliantly, though I wouldn’t have expected any less.” 

Jedao grimaced. “I’ve never lost a battle.”

“So you haven’t.” Kujen gave him an assessing look before shrugging. “You and I have much to discuss but we’ll have to put it on hold for the moment - the crew are waiting for a body to take back as proof that you no longer inhabit this one.” Kujen held a hand to the side, indicating a metal slab. “Shall we get started? Your new home awaits.” 

Even if he hadn’t seen the array of bright, sharp, shockingly low-tech tools on the tray beside the table, Jedao would have been terrified. But, he reminded himself, he had known what was coming from the moment he’d agreed to work with Kujen. He situated himself into a sitting position on the table with all the ease of an assassin. 

The Immolation Fox, ready for destruction.

The Nirai brought up a screen and began scrolling through equations that Jedao couldn’t parse. He knew the last person to be brought into the Black Cradle had lost their mind, and even though Kujen said he could bring Jedao through without a problem, there was no guarantee. “You’re confident in the calculations for this?” he asked.

One corner of Kujen’s lips tipped up but he didn’t pull his attention from the screen. “Want to double-check them, General?” 

_Point taken_. Jedao flattened his palms on the table, his ungloved hands chilled by the metal. He took a breath, enjoying the feeling of air going into his lungs, leaving through his nose. The air chilled his nostrils as it came through, but by the time he exhaled it had been noticeably warmed by his body – something he’d never thought about before. 

“Lie down.” Jedao obeyed and Kujen hovered over him, grinning. He turned and stroked the tools beside him, the bright ceiling lights glinting off of them into Jedao’s eyes. When Kujen spoke, it was almost with affection. “There are,” he explained to the tools, “certain torture parameters involved in getting into the Black Cradle for someone of your … stature.”

“Are there.” Color Jedao completely unsurprised. 

“Mmm.” Kujen stroked the handle of a tool with a crooked hook and lifted it, turning it in the light. Jedao could see small barbs on the tip of it and his Shuos training involuntarily suggested eleven different options of what it could be used for, and none of them were good. “Indeed, I expect this to be _very_ painful.”

It sounded like an understatement, but Jedao was determined not to appear afraid. “This doesn’t happen to be one of those reciprocal torture arrangements, does it?”

Kujen gave a low laugh, amused. “Oh, no. This is going to be very painful _for you_. But me …” That sociopath smile. “I’m going to enjoy making you undead, General.” 

Kujen’s gaze travelled slowly down Jedao’s body, an artist memorizing the contours of his canvas. His fingers trailed the front of the prisoner outfit the general wore and he began languorously unclasping the hooks.

His touch wasn’t exactly sexual, but it certainly fell on the far side of sensual and was too excited for the general’s comfort by half. Jedao forced his body to relax as his skin was slowly exposed, and he watched the hungry way Kujen took in each newly exposed stretch of skin. “Do the calculations you did for this require sex?”

A corner of the heptarch’s lip curled. “Not officially, but I could work that in if you’re interested.”

He had _no_ interest in increasing the number of heptarchs he'd fucked. “I’ll pass.”

“You may want to reconsider,” Kujen suggested, his fingers hesitating on their mission as he raised his eyebrows suggestively. “This is the last chance you’ll have with a body.” 

“I knew what I was giving up when I agreed to do this,” Jedao snapped.

He tilted his head side to side. “That you did, General, that you did.” He resumed undoing the hooks at a leisurely pace.

The general knew he was likely facing centuries of undeath, but even in the face of that the waiting was unbearable. He gave a hard exhale. “Let’s just get it over with.” 

Kujen laughed, a sound far too light for Jedao’s mood. “Get it over with? You’re an arch traitor, General Shuos Jedao, and the heptarchate entire has entrusted you to _me_.” The general knew he was getting what he needed to make his plan happen, not to mention what he deserved, but he wished all the same that Kujen’s grin that showed all of his teeth wasn’t the last thing he’d see with his own eyes. “The good part hasn’t even started yet.”

* * *

Jedao screamed.

He had a naturally high pain tolerance and had had plenty of training in techniques for withstanding torture, but he had decided years ago that it was best to give the heptarch what he wanted. Jedao made a show of restraining himself just enough to be believable, but before long he let himself go, screaming until he couldn’t see, until his vocal cords strained, until the sound blocked out the murders of each of his reports that ran in an endless loop in the back of his head. Kujen turned from artist to musician, drawing sounds out of Jedao’s body that he hadn’t known he could make. 

Jedao slipped into undeath still screaming.

It took him several moments to realize that only an echo of the pain had followed him into undeath – so why was he still screaming? Jedao finally put together that whoever _was_ screaming, it wasn’t him.

“Who is that?” he asked. It was a thought, channeled, and he thought for a few seconds that he was might be talking to himself before he heard Kujen’s reply.

“That’s your new roommate.” There was a rustle and a soft, wet _thwap_ that Jedao assumed was part of his body being prepared for the return trip. He had no stomach to vomit from, but that did nothing to decrease the corporal sensation of nausea. “You’ll get used to it after a few years.”

It must be the second person to enter the Black Cradle, the one that had gone mad. Jedao hadn’t realized that the second inhabitant of the Black Cradle was still … inhabiting. “Years?”

“It may not feel so long for you,” Kujen offered. “Or it may feel longer – you’re quite the experiment, General. How’s the Cradle fitting?”

Jedao turned his attention to his surroundings, more accurately described as the complete lack thereof. He felt adrift in nothing, cut off from everything except Kujen’s voice and actions and his own emotion. The emotion he wondered at, almost pitifully; there had been part of him that had hoped that his he could shed his own crushing guilt and self-hatred with his body. No such luck. “Alright, I think.” 

There were a few more noises as Kujen presumably moved around the room. “According to the calculations, the transition is complete. You’ve performed admirably to this point, General.”

He couldn’t keep the dryness out of his voice. “I think the entire rest of the heptarchate disagrees.”

“What do they know?” A sucking sound, maybe a bag sealing around what was left of Jedao on the table. “I’ll deliver this to the crew and send them off. Then we can run some tests and make any adjustments you need. My presence is going to be required elsewhere shortly, but we have all the time in the world to talk.” 

The emptiness around Jedao was so complete. “What am I supposed to do when you’re gone?”

Footsteps to the door. He couldn’t see Kujen’s smile but knew it was there all the same. “Why, General, I think the heptarchs are hoping you’ll use this time to reflect on what exactly it is you did to get sent here.”

* * *

“How will you recognize a heretical society that interests you?” Kujen asked, voice floating above the ever-present screams.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Jedao gritted, significantly worse the wear after the non-stop howling. 

“We will need to trust each other at some point, Shuos Jedao.” 

What he thought was: _I very much doubt that, Nirai Kujen_. 

But what he said was: “So we will.”

* * *

“If you didn’t have dyscalculia, think of what you could accomplish with all the time you have in here,” the Nirai wondered aloud – or, more accurately, wondered in such a way that his thoughts funneled towards Jedao. Jedao still wasn’t sure how the Black Cradle worked; Kujen had been reticent to explain any of the mechanisms even though there was no hope that Jedao could have ever understood them.

“The possibilities are astounding,” Jedao agreed unenthusiastically.

“It’s probably for the best that you can’t modify your own experience, though,” Kujen continued after a silence long enough that Jedao thought he’d fallen asleep or left. “You might end up like our friend in the other room. Or you might try to replicate what I’ve done, and we don’t need _two_ of me.”

_That we don’t_ , Jedao thought grimly.

A soft chuckle. “I heard that, General.”

* * *

“Who _is_ that?” Jedao asked. Time was a strange thing in undeath and even stranger in the black cradle; Kujen had said that he’d get used to the screams after a few years, but he was pretty sure it had been longer than that and the screams showed no sign of fraying his nerves any less.

Time _had_ made Kujen more forthcoming, though. “A very good lesson to all of the heptarchs with aspirations of immortality.”

“So, all of them.”

“Certainly, though the Shuos have always been particularly innovative in that regard. Hanging on to the title as long as you can stay alive means that there’s quite an incentive to live longer.”

“It’s a Shuos heptarch?”

“It was, yes.” A pause, then a wicked smile curled in Kujen’s voice. “I imagine you’re thinking of a Shuos heptarch you’d like to put there in its place, aren’t you, Shuos Jedao?” 

* * *

"Pick a card.”

Sleep wasn’t possible in the Black Cradle, but Jedao had discovered a sort of meditative state that made everything hurt less. He’d been spending longer and longer stretches in that state and he wondered if Kujen could feel his irritation at being pulled out of it. “You’re kidding right?”

“Standard deck,” the Nirai observed. “Pick one.” 

A lungless sigh. “The thirty-second.”

The sound of a card flipping up. “Duce of Gears,” Kujen mused, his voice betraying his admiration in a way that made Jedao think it really had been the thirty-second card. “The Shuos love for games continues into undeath.”

“Do I win anything?”

“The chance to remake the heptarchate however you’d like. Is that enough for you?”

* * *

The first anchor was a man, nearly the same height and weight Jedao had been when he had had a body, though he wouldn’t realize until the next anchor how fortunate that was. Other than size, Jedao and his anchor were opposites in almost every way: one dark where the other was light, one closed where the other was open. The man blinked at Jedao’s reflection in the mirror the same way he had sat staring at his shadow, stunned.

The first thing Jedao noticed was how good it felt to experience things in a linear fashion again – holding on to a human perception of the passing of time was tricky in the Black Cradle. Here, too, there were colors to be seen even if he wasn’t seeing them with eyes; here, there was air to breathe even if he wasn’t the one breathing it. He let his anchor collect himself while he enjoyed the feeling of being something resembling alive.

Kujen opened the door. “You’re looking good, General.” 

The poor Kel stuttered. “I’m, I’m not a – “

“He was talking to me.” Jedao hadn’t considered whether speaking would function differently once he was anchored; he had done it reflexively and it seemed to work well enough. After just a handful of moments calibrating himself, Jedao knew that Kujen’s calculations had been as precise as he’d promised in an anchored state as well – he was still in charge of his mental facilities, able to communicate easily, even still had emotions. Mostly the overwhelming sense of self-hatred that he’d carried with him into undeath, but an emotion nonetheless.

The Kel startled and Jedao felt the rush of his surprise up against his own – mind? Consciousness? Self? He’d have to work out the terminology later. Whatever it was, it was a bad sign; if there was any emotional crossover between him and the Kel he was going to have to be more careful than he’d thought.

“I was going to write you a manual,” Kujen said, speaking now to the anchor, a smile on his face that Jedao trusted exactly as far as he could throw Kujen in his undead state. “But you’re the first anchor. So do me a favor and take notes on this experience, will you?”

“Who are you?” the man asked, his Kel instinct running haywire with a general inside his head and an undercover Nirai heptarch asking for favors. He kept looking nervously between Kujen and Jedao’s reflection in the mirror.

“Who are _you_?” Kujen prompted, clearly enjoying toying with the man. 

“Enough,” Jedao said, weary. “Give us a little time to discuss first.” 

“Surely.” Kujen hesitated at the door. “But, General, do try to make good use of your time out of the Black Cradle, won’t you? I’d hate to have to end the experiment so soon.”

Jedao missed not having eyes to narrow. “I’m your gun,” he replied. 

* * *

Jedao came to, groggy after the separation from his most recent anchor. The separation process alone had been excruciating enough to make him wish for death – and he hadn’t even been the one with a body. He was now in the step between anchor and Cradle, an ambient floating with most of his vision but a muted sense of self. He let himself relax, thinking back to the battle he’d just fought. He had been useful, used.

But he hadn’t gotten what he needed. 

A few anchors before had been the heresy that turned the heptarchate into a _hex_ archate – something that both he and Kujen had been excited about then disappointed by. They’d ultimately had to do relatively little to stabilize into six rather than seven: Kujen had just had to massacre a small amount of math and Jedao a small number of people. 

Small relative to his previous massacres, anyway.

Every time he’d been anchored since then, he’d thought that maybe someone had found a weakness in the system, that there would be an interesting set of heretics for him to explore. But it hadn’t been the case so far – just more of the same battles. He did his best to remain useful to the Kel regardless by refusing to ever lose.

Kujen entered in a different body from the one he’d been wearing when Jedao had left, but this one was just as graceful, just as beautiful. He definitely had a type.

He was only a few steps into the room when Jedao noticed the deep red bite mark on his neck and the not-quite dried blood under his fingernails. He was smirking.

“You could _pretend_ to enjoy it less.” Jedao didn’t take any of the pains he had in life to keep his voice cordial; he had learned long ago that it didn’t matter on Kujen anyway.

“I could,” the Nirai agreed, “but what would be the point? Besides, you and I have no secrets from each other.” This was said with a grin that indicated that they both knew it to be untrue. “But you’re not usually so touchy. Are you still smarting from the separation?”

Jedao was, of course. “Is the torture even necessary?”

“ _Heresy_ ,” Kujen hissed, enjoying himself.

“I’m already an arch traitor,” Jedao replied drily. “Should I be afraid of being made undead again?”

“Stop flirting,” the Nirai said, suddenly bored with the conversation. He adjusted a ruffle on his shirt. “Did you learn anything useful on this expedition?” 

“No.” Jedao sighed – or what amounted to a sigh given that he didn’t have lungs. “It’s still the same heretics with the same solutions.”

“And how’s the Cradle fitting? Anything chafing?” 

After all this time, Jedao was still amazed that Kujen could discuss undeath so casually. Jedao wanted to scoff, but there were a number of things that _were_ chafing, some of them worse than others. A century ago he’d toyed with asking Kujen if he could block out the memories of the battle of Hellspin Fortress, but he decided not understanding why he was in the Black Cradle would drive him into madness. Kujen might have been able to tweak his highly unproductive sex drive, but he wasn’t about to ask the hexarch for that. “No.”

Kujen clapped his hands together. “Well, back into the Cradle with you, then.” He turned towards the computer, began making calculations, and the room became dark, fading out the last colors Jedao would see for a good long while. “I’ll try to scare up some more promising heretics next time.”

* * *

The first thing they always noticed was the shadow. There had been scores of anchors by now and it was always the eyes staring out from the shadow that captivated them. Jedao hadn’t decided yet if it was a side effect of the drugs or if they were simply avoiding looking in the mirror. 

Being anchored to a human caused a resurgence of Jedao’s emotions that got worse each time, the hormones and neurotransmitters swirling together with the silence of the last few decades. _I am not going to scream_ , he told himself. _I am not going to scream_ … 

She was frozen, so he spoke. “They must not have warned you. My apologies, no one has told me your name –?” 

She straightened, Kel formation instinct kicking in hard as the drugs wore off. “Captain Kel Cheris, sir.” 

The language had changed over the centuries, but he was fairly certain that in this context the excessive and formationally correct politesse of her response was an insult. _Well, that’s new_. The last anchor had panicked badly enough that they’d had to be sedated for days, setting the whole program back, so Jedao needed to be cautious right now, especially given her evident tendency towards formation instinct. He mentally took a deep breath and began his explanations.

It didn’t take too long for Jedao to sense that something was different. Perhaps it was her demeanor or the way she stared at his reflection in the mirror unafraid. Then again, perhaps it was just boredom from centuries in the Black Cradle causing him to grasp at straws.

When Kujen arrived dressed in elegant black and gold, Jedao thought he noticed a shift in his demeanor, as well. He answered Jedao’s coded question about Cheris’ formation instinct with a smile. “I don’t think she’s unusual, but we can’t let her out as your keeper when she’s so suggestible. Much as you wish we would.”

_I suppose that answers part of the question_. “I’ve behaved for four centuries,” Jedao said. “I’m not likely to change now.” 

“That’s what they thought when you were alive, too.” 

Sometimes Jedao thought Kujen had spent the better part of his eight centuries practicing witty repartees. “You like irrefutable arguments, don’t you?”

“I like winning.” 

Cheris walked on a treadmill and Jedao felt the jolt of her weight through her leg – after not having a body for so long the sensation was almost overwhelming. His muscle memory strained against hers before coming to a workable compromise. 

The Nirai turned back to Cheris. “Jedao, I trust she’s satisfactory?”

Jedao could feel Cheris’s heart flutter and see the pulse in her neck. Another journey, another battle. More people to kill. But if he played it right, maybe this time …

“I’m your gun,” he replied.


End file.
